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Grant County Local Emergency Planning Committee Minutes
June 16, 2011

Don Button called the meeting to order at 11:33 AM. Members present were Richard Banes Jr., Don Button, Vivian Button, Jerry Deckert, Richard Everett, Roger Gardner, Carolyn Henry, Joe Leibbrandt, Nahum Manzano, Alan Olson, Janet Thomeczek and Ryan Veesart.  We had two guest, Sean Connelly from KU School of Pharmacy and Cathy Hernandez Regional Coordinator for Kansas Division of Emergency Management.

Jerry Deckert made a motion to accept the minutes to the last meeting.  Motion Seconded by Richard Banes.   Motion carried.

The LEPC By-Laws were discussed and it was decided we did not need to make any changes at this time.

Fire Department, Emergency Medical Service and Emergency Management all have booths at the Grant County Fair which is July 16 to 23.  If any member of the LEPC has something they would like to display at our booths we would be glad to work with them.

We have received the paper work for the Hazardous Materials Emergency Planning Grant.  We have received this grant before for hazardous material training.  We sent several responders to Colorado to become Hazardous Material Technicians.  Please let Emergency Management know if you would like more information on this grant.  The paper work has to be submitted by July 20^th.

The next Region 7 Local Emergency Planning Committee (LEPC) conference will be July 28 thru 30, 2011 at La Vista, Nebraska.  There are scholarships available if any of the LEPC members would like to attend.

Don talked about the state is looking at deploying some of the Incident Management Teams to the state Emergency Operation Center because of the flooding issues to help.

The 800 MHz towers for Ford, Gray and Stevens-Seward have been digitized.  Cathy Hernandez stated the MRCC Medcom 7 will be going away the end of the year and you will have to talk to St. Catherine’s Hospital on the 800 MHz.

All of Grant County’s 800 MHz radios but one was updated for the re-banding last week.  They will have to be updated one more time before the conversion is complete.

Nahum Manzano stated BP is going to be doing a turnaround in July.

Carolyn Henry of the American Red Cross stated she is on call to go help with the flooding in the east part of the state.  She said they are having a time with the donation coming into Joplin.  People are just dropping stuff off like clothes and items and it is becoming a real problem.  They are also short of volunteers for Red Cross and are in need of more people.

Joe Leibbrandt, county extension agent, stated they are getting ready for fair.

Janet Thomeczek, Bob Wilson Hospital, stated they had their disaster exercise on May 19 and it went well.  They have had to evacuate the patients from the second floor because of weather conditions.  The evacuation went well and they have learned some things and have been updating their severe weather plan.  They are working on making all medical records electronic.

Richard Banes, City/County Building Inspector, said “Remember your Permits”.

Kristy Frazee, Health Department Administrator, stated they are pretty busy with vaccinations and are already doing school physicals. 

Jerry Deckert, Grant County EMS, stated they conducted a Emergency Pediatric Care class.  Attending were 6 EMS personnel, a nurse and one other, not only did they receive the training with new techniques and information when all of the paperwork is completed five of the EMS personnel will be instructors for the class.  EMS has been busy.

Cathy Hernandez, KDEM Regional Coordinator, stated that the State fiscal year starts July 1 and several departments will be absorbed into other departments.  An example is the Kansas Animal Health will be under the Kansas Department of Ag and the Homeland Security will go back into Kansas Division Emergency Management.

Richard Everett, Southwest Kansas Health Initiative, said they are closing out the end of their year and funding for next year has been cut by 11%.

Roger Gardner talked about the Bike Across America; the Chamber of Commerce is setting up a stop at the Alco parking lot for the bikers.  They are needing some people to volunteer to man the stop.

Vivian Button talked about e-mails from noreplay@neteop.com.  Our local Emergency Operations plan is on the NetEOP website and she is making some updates to the plan.

The next meeting will be July 21 at 11:30 AM at the Emergency Management booth at the Grant County Fair.

Motion to Adjourn was made by Jerry Deckert. Motion seconded by Janet Thomecezk.  Meeting adjourned at 12:20 PM.

Minutes Respectfully submitted by Vivian Button.